Gerald Gottfried
Interviewed by Jodi Lee Knowlton
Camera by Tyler Starbard
October 22, 2010
Knowlton: Today is Friday, October 22, 2010. I’m Jodi Lee Knowlton, and I’m interviewing today, and Tyler Starbard is operating our camera. Today we are interviewing Gerald Gottfried-or Jerry.
Gottfried: Jerry [unclear].
Knowlton: And you’re a research forester with Rocky Mountain Research Station?
Gottfried: Uh-huh [yes].
Knowlton: And this is part of the oral histories of the Beaver Creek Watershed Project, which is part of the Ecological Oral Histories Project of Northern Arizona, and this is Tape 1. So let’s just start with how you’re associated with the Beaver Creek Watershed Project, and what, kind of, was your role when you worked there?
Gottfried: Well, I wasn’t really a member of the Beaver Creek Project per se. In fact, I was assigned to the Mixed Conifer Project, which was based in Tempe. So Beaver Creek did ponderosa pine and P.J. [piñon juniper] and we did mixed conifer and high elevation ponderosa pine. So I wasn’t a member of the project per se. But when I got transferred to Flagstaff, I did work on the Beaver Creek watersheds as a member of the piñon juniper woodland effort that was going on at the time.
Knowlton: Okay. And what areas did you look at in the piñon juniper? Like what area did you study?
Gottfried: Well, I was interested that they had the old inventories for watersheds below or south of the [Washoe?] Camp, and I was wondering if we could get an idea of growth using the old inventory locations and trees-was actually my main concern in the area. We also used Beaver Creek for a plot where we were looking at piñon regeneration, where we put out seeds and wanted to see what germination was like, and what growth was like in the piñon. We weren’t concerned with juniper.
Knowlton: Okay. And when you talk about these old inventories, who took those old inventories?
Gottfried: I would imagine-they date from the sixties-I don’t know for sure, but I think probably Ffolliott was involved, and some of his colleagues.
Knowlton: And what time were you there?
Gottfried: Well, I was in Flagstaff from 1984, actually, through 1995, though I wasn’t... I was at the U. of A. for about a year and a half in that period.
Knowlton: And when you looked at the difference between the old inventory and the inventory that you took, what kind of did you find?
Gottfried: The Beaver Creek piñon juniper woodlands could be broken into two groups, one being the juniper dominated one, and one being the Utah juniper dominated group, and one being the alligator juniper group. And we could not reconcile the old data sheets in the Utah juniper. So after trying it out, we gave up. And then for the alligator juniper, we actually had a crew from the University of Arizona, and our people, and we did locate those plots, and we did re-inventory, and came out with a paper which was presented at one of the piñon juniper meetings that was held in Flagstaff, showing changes in growth over time. I don’t have the exact numbers, but we could always look it up if it was important.
Knowlton: Doing that research on the ground, what was it directed at? Any kind of management practice, or...?
Gottfried: Well, the piñon juniper has had a varied career. For years no one cared about it. They cabled it, they burned it, they grazed it, and they didn’t care about it. Then about the time of the fuel shortages, people began to harvest the woodlands fairly heavily, and some people were concerned, "Are they sustainable? Are we using sustainable management?" And they went back and they didn’t really find much information about P.J., except maybe some of the early work by Dr. Little and his associates. So the regional office decided that there should be a piñon juniper project, and the Rocky Mountain Station agreed with them, and consequently I was assigned to it. And so our idea was to look at the basic ecology and try to develop possibly some silvacultural prescriptions that might be applicable for sustainable management of piñon juniper woodlands.
Knowlton: And did you guys succeed in doing that?
Gottfried: We actually have some information out, but eventually it’s the manager who has to decide whether he or she wants to use that information or not. So we, for example-not at Beaver Creek, but at another site on the Black Mesa District, which is part of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, tried single-tree selection. We tried different forms of overstory removal, and found they were viable silvacultural procedures, but they do require an input of labor-not foresters, but you need to go in and is it single-tree selection?, you need to select trees to retain, and trees not to retain. And the idea is to sustain the woodland on a continuing basis so you always have a tree cover. On the other treatments, the overstory removal, the time between harvest and subsequent harvests is much longer.
Knowlton: And has that been implemented? Have you seen that implemented now?
Gottfried: Not really, but one of my colleagues with the Bureau of Land Management is actually using silvacultural prescriptions, so he sets his targets using [Standent’s?] index, but he is actually moving in the way-I appreciate his efforts, and his idea is the same as mine, to maintain a sustainable stand on the land. And the BIA, out of New Mexico, also has been trying-they have growth and yield plots where they’re trying to look at retaining some level of residual basal area ranging from twenty square feet per acre up to-comparing twenty, forty, and sixty. It varies because of the stands and the control, and seeing what growth is like under these different regimes.
Knowlton: And that’s going on right now?
Gottfried: They’re analyzing the data now. Because it’s a growth and yield plot, it’s a long-term plot. So if plots were set up in the nineties or so, they probably did a measurement in the mid 2000s, and they’ll probably do another measurement ten years subsequent.
Knowlton: And kind of on that note, we’re also interested in the idea that a lot of these studies started on the Beaver Creek Watershed and in that area so long ago. And so what’s the importance of having that kind of long-term range of study?
Gottfried: In general, long-term studies are actually vital for forestry, because we’re dealing usually with long periods of time. They always talked about a 120-year rotation, it would be nice to know what happens after five years of following your treatment. So forestry, by its nature, is a long-term effort, and will outlive most of the people who set up the study-the point being that they should be aware of these plots, and then if funding and interest are there, they should go into these plots and re-measure them and see what’s happening in them. Then they can adjust their plans for the future, based on the data that are being collected. So long-term study plots are actually very important. Same goes with efforts to maintain the experimental forest system, because of the same reason basically. I once heard a lecture by a scientist from the Northeast. He looked at a long-term watershed study. He said, "Well, if I had stopped the study in five years, these are my results. But now I’ve gone twenty years and these are my results," and they’re quite different, because they have hit a peak of heavy precipitation period and everything looked great, and then went into a drought. So we’ve got to, especially in the Southwest, deal with a whole range of climatic conditions which affect water yield and tree growth and vegetation health, understory vegetation health.
Knowlton: And the studies that you guys did on Beaver Creek, how long was the range?
Gottfried: Well, these plots were visited in the sixties, and we came back, I think, in the nineties. I can give you the exact.... Actually, I can.... Because I prepared a little list of things that I’ve been involved with-if I can find the right [solace?]. This was published in ’95, so it probably went to ’94. And so it was probably ’64, ’65, so about thirty years ago.
Knowlton: Speaking of the different things that you were involved in, in some of the research we did, we found some literature on snow management and snow levels that you were part of.
Gottfried: A lot of the snow papers, actually, Pete did the lower elevation, and I did the watersheds that were either in the Sierra Ancha Mountains-we have an experimental forest there-or in the White Mountains where we had a number of experimental watersheds, which were gauged watersheds where we measured snow and vegetation and wildlife.
Knowlton: So there was different-if I’m understanding correctly-different forests and different plots involved in those papers?
Gottfried: Some of the papers-we’d have to look at a specific paper, but some of them we would combine data. Some of the early papers, we looked at the NRCS snow courses, and looked at data from the different snow courses and how they compared with the watersheds where we had more intensive data. That’s one of the papers. I didn’t list it there, but actually we did have one in 1981 or ’2, Pete and I were involved with-Ffolliott. I’ve gotta be careful, because you have another Pete here.
Knowlton: Oh, that’s true. So the snow courses and measuring that, what’s kind of the significance of understanding that?
Gottfried: Well, the thing is that the NRCS, originally the SES, has these snow courses throughout the West, essentially, and they would use these data to try to forecast runoff for the spring. So most of these are in openings, they’re in like eight to ten stakes across an opening-in the old days. Now they use telemetry. So they would take measurements. And we were curious, said, "Well, we’ve got, in several cases, where we’ve got an NRCS or SES snow course in the middle of our area, how well do our snow courses match up with the NRCS? And so the NRCS gauges, the way they’re located, actually represent conditions above the elevation of our snow courses. So if we were working at 8,000 feet, a snow course might be more representative of 9,000 feet, just talking roughly. So that was interesting. We’ve actually used NRCS data. At Workman Creek we have a gauge and we’ve got to use that, because there was a period when we didn’t use snow courses there, but we used the NRCS to try to understand stream flow from the Workman Creek watersheds, which are in the mixed conifer type.
Knowlton: Understanding that stream flow, how does that kind of relate to something maybe more tangible for like the society or the community?
Gottfried: Well, the water on all these watersheds were part of the Salt-Verde River System, and the water flows into one of the reservoirs, either Roosevelt Lake or into the Verde System lakes. We were working very closely in the early days with the Salt River Project, and they were interested in trying to refine their measurements and predictions, especially in 1968 was a very wet year, so they were a little concerned because they had to manage the reservoirs. You know, the ideal is to end the snow melt season with a full reservoir, but you don’t want to endanger the reservoir, so you’ve got to release. So that’s when you see water running down the Salt River, is because they’re releasing either-usually in anticipation of more stream flow coming into the reservoir system from the higher elevation watersheds.
Knowlton: Great. So you were talking about the Salt River Project which was kind of essential in watershed management in Arizona. And it seems like there’s a lot of different organizations that were working with this Beaver Creek, so how did that kind of interplay happen? There’s like NAU, U. of A.....
Gottfried: Well, the task was really between the Coconino National Forest and the Rocky Mountain Station, which at that time was Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. So they decided to set up these watersheds and try to determine how different land management treatments affect runoff, which is actually what their initial goal was. The goal was not, as I understand it, not a multi-product goal, or a multi-resource goal, but a water goal, so to speak. And then they said, "This is an opportunity that we can study other aspects of the ecosystem," so then they branched out and began looking at the understory, and they had wildlife biologists, Game & Fish had a scientist working on Beaver Creek at one time. So then because forest [unclear] research was not a very big organization, and there’s expertise at NAU and at the U. of A., we brought in other people to help us fill in the gaps. Ffolliott, who you will speak with soon, was actually a Forest Service employee in the early days, and then he went down to the U. of A. for his Ph.D. and they thought so highly of him that they recruited him for the faculty, and he’s been there since.
Knowlton: And kind of establishing these partnerships with these people, it appears you guys have all continued kind of working together. So is that kind of a crucial thing? I mean, is that something positive that came out of the Beaver Creek experiments?
Gottfried: Well it’s good, I mean, in general, when you collaborate and everybody has something to contribute, everybody benefits. So I don’t know, Beaver Creek’s pretty much slowed down now, so I don’t know. Our guy technically was on the faculty at NAU, I think Kaylee [phonetic] has some work going on down there, but I’m not really aware of the fine points.
Knowlton: Okay. But since, even outside of Beaver Creek, like past that research and that experiment, have you continued working with people (Gottfried: Sure.) that you worked with on that project, that maybe you wouldn’t have made those connections?
Gottfried: Actually, I met Pete there. When I first came to Arizona, he was already well-established. And I always joke that I’ve known Pete longer than I’ve known my wife. (chuckles) But anyway, so that’s continued on. We maintained, we worked on projects over the years. And then when the Forest Service said I should go to school because I only had a master’s, U. of A. was my choice. I made arrangements and I ended up working as-Pete was my major professor.
Knowlton: Okay. And then you finished your master’s?
Gottfried: No, I had my master’s. That’s when I finished my Ph.D.
Knowlton: Oh, you finished your Ph.D., and then you came back to Rocky Mountain?
Gottfried: Yeah. Rocky Mountain Station actually paid for my.... I was on a half-time, so I worked half of the time, and then went to school half the time. They paid. So on the summers, during the summers and school breaks, I was up in Flagstaff. And then when I finished-not the dissertation, but most of the classwork-then I went back to the lab on campus.
Knowlton: Great. So in Beaver Creek, they set up kind of these control and different management treatments, and you were working downstream from those?
Gottfried: Who, me, or the research team?
Knowlton: Both.
Gottfried: Well, actually I came on after a lot of the watershed research had been terminated. In fact, one reason I got transferred to Flagstaff was that they had terminated most of the watershed studies in Arizona. So they had terminated not only Beaver Creek, but also studies in the Sierra Ancha Mountains and Three Bar, which is a chaparral watershed area on the west side of Roosevelt Lake. And there were watersheds in the Prescott area, they were terminated too. The only ones that remained were some of the watersheds in the White Mountains, and they were terminated in ’86 or ’89. So it was a whole redirection of research in the Southwest at that time. So the gauges were not being read, except as noted, and so since I had a degree in forestry at the time, they assigned me to Flagstaff.
Knowlton: So I guess overall-I know you talked about how it started out as just seeing how land management treatments affected the watersheds, and it kind of grew-if there was kind of a Big Picture idea that came out of these watershed experiments and Beaver Creek Watershed Experiment, is there one that you can kind of solidify?
Gottfried: Well, because of a variety of treatments, they gave managers an idea of what’s the possibility of a major resource, and how to manage, especially in the ponderosa pine type, how to manage ponderosa pine for the benefit of the ponderosa pine forest, and at the same time being able to augment the stream flow. And at the same time, they were looking at how these treatments affected wildlife and range, because there was a range scientist on board, Warren Clary, and he was interested in the understory. I think there were a few cattle experiments in the mix too.
Knowlton: Have you seen any of the research and kind of the findings of Beaver Creek implemented, or did it kind of shape how the land was managed?
Gottfried: I don’t think the managers would go and say, "Okay, this is what they did on Watershed 17, let’s say, just for argument’s sake. I think what it does is allow the managers to see what the potentials are, and they say, "If we look at the resources that may benefit, or not benefit from a particular prescription-you know, the work at Beaver Creek and other places-we’ll say this should benefit it, or this will not benefit, or it’ll be neutral." So in this day and age we have to look at the whole package, and it helps them give them some idea of what may be the consequences of their actions. But the final decision on managing the land belongs to the land manager, whether it’s the Forest Service, like the Coconino, or the Apache Sitgreaves, or the BLM district if they’re involved-what have you.
Knowlton: Right. It seems like there’s a few groups, like the Arizona Watershed Project, and kind of the more groups associated with getting the water and having the water to use downstream, and increasing the water yield. Were you involved in any of that, or do you know kind of how that interplayed with the project?
Gottfried: Well, that was the goal at Beaver Creek, and it was the goal of the mixed conifer work. The thing is that we knew if we cut all the trees off, and there were experiments at both Workman Creek and at Beaver Creek, Washoe 12, where they cut all the trees off, so that was drastic treatment. We explained that this is an experiment, we’re not recommending this kind of a treatment, because you don’t do that. But it did give us an idea what the potential was. And then if we say, "Okay, now we go backwards," and if we leave a certain density of trees, or cut strips, or what have you, then we’re getting ‘X’ percent of what the full potential is." So the project was initially started during the drought of the fifties-I mean the discussions between the various water managers, land managers, and the Forest Service, and I guess to some extent the university people. And so during drought everybody is thirsty, and so this was an issue. And then as we see today in some of the discussions, people worried that young trees were taking over the world. And you see that argument today, interestingly enough-and we’re in a drought. (chuckles) So this is what actually brought the people together initially, was a drought, and the concern about the land management.
Knowlton: Do you have anything else, Tyler? Do you have any other aspects of the project that we might not have covered? I mean, I know there’s a lot, it’s a huge project.
Gottfried: Yeah, I think if you have the resources, both in money and people, that there is really a distinct value of maintaining historical sites, research sites. And being able to maintain the record-maybe not as intensely as it was done in the early days, but I think because we’re in a fluid situation always, because we’re dealing with climate and issues of land management philosophy, that it’s worthwhile to have these reference sites throughout the area-the Western United States, let’s say--[unclear] the country, where you can actually use to find out what the trajectory is of different land management, or of the land itself without management, which is, in fact, a kind of management too. Doing nothing is a management decision.
Knowlton: So potentially revisiting the sites at Beaver Creek and seeing what changes have occurred since the kind of treatments the study was terminated.
Gottfried: Right. The only thing at Beaver Creek, the Forest came in there and cut some of the plots, so we really may have to-it’s not really a long-term continuation, though. I don’t know if the data collections were as intense as they were originally, so it may be that they may have to start.... It may not have a continuous record, and we have to reboot, so to speak. But there are areas-I mean these points actually have value otherwise, because like at Workman Creek in the Sierra Anchas, we had the Coon Creek Fire which devastated the area. I mean, it was a wildfire. We went back and re-established our points, and used those points to determine changes in vegetation. And overstory, understory, related to the fire. Some people may have used those for soil sampling points, too. Our effort was mainly looking at vegetation.
Knowlton: And there was prescribed burning that took place at Beaver Creek, correct?
Gottfried: Yeah.
Knowlton: In some of the literature that we’ve read, it seemed like the idea of prescribed burning was kind of relatively new at the time, as a management.
Gottfried: Yeah, kind of emerged from the fuel clean-up, post logging, and progressed to a point now where it could be a treatment, depending on standing conditions of trying to improve the stand. As long as you could keep the intensity of fire so we don’t damage the stands with understory burning, is viable. And there are some research studies surrounding Flagstaff, and throughout the country, where they’re looking at the effects of logging, logging and fire, and fire alone-firefighter surrogate study. And there is a plot at Fort Valley, just outside of Flagstaff. I don’t think there are any at Beaver Creek. They’re all scattered throughout the United States, from Washington State on down California and then over.
Knowlton: Right. And I think if I remember, you also have worked on sedimentation, in-stream fill, in the piñon juniper?
Gottfried: Yeah, we did. We worked with Lopes and Ffolliott, now because Baker and I worked on a study. And then Lopes and Ffolliott and Baker did a subsequent study on sedimentation on some of these areas.
Knowlton: And was that effects from fire?
Gottfried: It was mostly, I think, more of mechanical treatments.
Knowlton: And what kind of mechanical treatments?
Gottfried: They were in P.J. science primarily.
Knowlton: So you guys came in and did thinning, or what kind of treatments did you do?
Gottfried: No, we just looked at the soil movement, because we had records to match up, if I’m.... You know, it’s been a while.
Knowlton: Yeah. I’m trying to understand-the soil movement would be from logging, from traffic, from what kind of...?
Gottfried: Soil movement in P.J. was because of the mechanical-you know, the sites were treated with heavy equipment. And so initially the soil was fluffed up, the crust was broken, and they were prone to-you know, if you had a runoff event, surface runoff, it would move the soil. In the study they did where they sprayed P.J., they had less erosion because they left the trees alone for about five years after the treatment. They had a water yield increase. I don’t think the soil erosion was as high as on some of the mechanically treated plots. That was Malkinson’s study, not mine.
Knowlton: I’m trying to think of anything else about kind of this big overarching project that incorporated a lot of stuff.
Gottfried: I think Beaver Creek produced good information. A good part of it, but probably not all of it, was published and is available. Because sometimes it’s hard to go from the field stage to the writing stage. I think there’s a fairly good record of the literature on Beaver Creek. And I think-well actually, didn’t Malkinson put a bibliography together?
Knowlton: Yeah, they did, and it’s quite hefty-a hefty sum of publications.
Gottfried: There were results of coming out of, quite a bit of information coming out of Beaver Creek.
Knowlton: And I guess do you think in that sense that people are referring to that study and using that study?
Gottfried: Well, we hope so!
Knowlton: Right.
Gottfried: You know, sometimes things become standard, appear in manuals and things like that, so they may not know that the results came from Beaver Creek. They just say, "When you’re in this situation, do ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘C,’" or, "Do ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and not ‘C,’ and then do ‘D.’" So the information’s out there, but it may not be referenced as Beaver Creek information.
Knowlton: As coming from Beaver Creek, right. That’s very cool. (to Starbard) Do you have anything else? No. (to Gottfried) Do you have anything else?
Gottfried: I don’t know-you ask?
Knowlton: I feel like we covered quite a bit of stuff.
Gottfried: I assume you talked to Dan Neary. Oh yeah, you told me that you’re trying to set up an....
Knowlton: Yeah, we’re still trying to get in touch with him.
Gottfried: Because he would be the-Beaver Creek would fall into his venue, though right now he’s very busy with the Schultz Fire.
Knowlton: Oh, I actually didn’t even think about his connection with the Schultz Fire.
Gottfried: Yeah, his crew’s been there since the fire, taking measurements. We worked together on the border. Do you know Karen Koestner? She’s a technician, fire [unclear] for Neary. I try to schedule her to go down and check our gauges down there, and she has to work around the Schultz Fire.
Knowlton: Yeah that makes sense. It’s kind of a big area of new research to look into.
Gottfried: And fortunately or unfortunately, it was right outside of town, so they could jump right on it, as soon as they were allowed in, which is actually a good thing, and you don’t have to travel for four hours to get there.
Knowlton: Right. Yeah, and there’s a lot of resources going into that because it was really scary for the Flagstaff community, so everyone’s kind of-it hit home, everyone’s jumpin’ on it.
Gottfried: One of my friends is still digging part of his property out.
Knowlton: Oh, from the flooding and stuff?
Gottfried: Yeah, the mud. I think the house was okay, but the outbuildings and corrals are having problems.
Knowlton: Yeah, it was a pretty intense summer after that fire happened.
Gottfried: Yeah. Scary.

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Gerald Gottfried
Interviewed by Jodi Lee Knowlton
Camera by Tyler Starbard
October 22, 2010
Knowlton: Today is Friday, October 22, 2010. I’m Jodi Lee Knowlton, and I’m interviewing today, and Tyler Starbard is operating our camera. Today we are interviewing Gerald Gottfried-or Jerry.
Gottfried: Jerry [unclear].
Knowlton: And you’re a research forester with Rocky Mountain Research Station?
Gottfried: Uh-huh [yes].
Knowlton: And this is part of the oral histories of the Beaver Creek Watershed Project, which is part of the Ecological Oral Histories Project of Northern Arizona, and this is Tape 1. So let’s just start with how you’re associated with the Beaver Creek Watershed Project, and what, kind of, was your role when you worked there?
Gottfried: Well, I wasn’t really a member of the Beaver Creek Project per se. In fact, I was assigned to the Mixed Conifer Project, which was based in Tempe. So Beaver Creek did ponderosa pine and P.J. [piñon juniper] and we did mixed conifer and high elevation ponderosa pine. So I wasn’t a member of the project per se. But when I got transferred to Flagstaff, I did work on the Beaver Creek watersheds as a member of the piñon juniper woodland effort that was going on at the time.
Knowlton: Okay. And what areas did you look at in the piñon juniper? Like what area did you study?
Gottfried: Well, I was interested that they had the old inventories for watersheds below or south of the [Washoe?] Camp, and I was wondering if we could get an idea of growth using the old inventory locations and trees-was actually my main concern in the area. We also used Beaver Creek for a plot where we were looking at piñon regeneration, where we put out seeds and wanted to see what germination was like, and what growth was like in the piñon. We weren’t concerned with juniper.
Knowlton: Okay. And when you talk about these old inventories, who took those old inventories?
Gottfried: I would imagine-they date from the sixties-I don’t know for sure, but I think probably Ffolliott was involved, and some of his colleagues.
Knowlton: And what time were you there?
Gottfried: Well, I was in Flagstaff from 1984, actually, through 1995, though I wasn’t... I was at the U. of A. for about a year and a half in that period.
Knowlton: And when you looked at the difference between the old inventory and the inventory that you took, what kind of did you find?
Gottfried: The Beaver Creek piñon juniper woodlands could be broken into two groups, one being the juniper dominated one, and one being the Utah juniper dominated group, and one being the alligator juniper group. And we could not reconcile the old data sheets in the Utah juniper. So after trying it out, we gave up. And then for the alligator juniper, we actually had a crew from the University of Arizona, and our people, and we did locate those plots, and we did re-inventory, and came out with a paper which was presented at one of the piñon juniper meetings that was held in Flagstaff, showing changes in growth over time. I don’t have the exact numbers, but we could always look it up if it was important.
Knowlton: Doing that research on the ground, what was it directed at? Any kind of management practice, or...?
Gottfried: Well, the piñon juniper has had a varied career. For years no one cared about it. They cabled it, they burned it, they grazed it, and they didn’t care about it. Then about the time of the fuel shortages, people began to harvest the woodlands fairly heavily, and some people were concerned, "Are they sustainable? Are we using sustainable management?" And they went back and they didn’t really find much information about P.J., except maybe some of the early work by Dr. Little and his associates. So the regional office decided that there should be a piñon juniper project, and the Rocky Mountain Station agreed with them, and consequently I was assigned to it. And so our idea was to look at the basic ecology and try to develop possibly some silvacultural prescriptions that might be applicable for sustainable management of piñon juniper woodlands.
Knowlton: And did you guys succeed in doing that?
Gottfried: We actually have some information out, but eventually it’s the manager who has to decide whether he or she wants to use that information or not. So we, for example-not at Beaver Creek, but at another site on the Black Mesa District, which is part of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, tried single-tree selection. We tried different forms of overstory removal, and found they were viable silvacultural procedures, but they do require an input of labor-not foresters, but you need to go in and is it single-tree selection?, you need to select trees to retain, and trees not to retain. And the idea is to sustain the woodland on a continuing basis so you always have a tree cover. On the other treatments, the overstory removal, the time between harvest and subsequent harvests is much longer.
Knowlton: And has that been implemented? Have you seen that implemented now?
Gottfried: Not really, but one of my colleagues with the Bureau of Land Management is actually using silvacultural prescriptions, so he sets his targets using [Standent’s?] index, but he is actually moving in the way-I appreciate his efforts, and his idea is the same as mine, to maintain a sustainable stand on the land. And the BIA, out of New Mexico, also has been trying-they have growth and yield plots where they’re trying to look at retaining some level of residual basal area ranging from twenty square feet per acre up to-comparing twenty, forty, and sixty. It varies because of the stands and the control, and seeing what growth is like under these different regimes.
Knowlton: And that’s going on right now?
Gottfried: They’re analyzing the data now. Because it’s a growth and yield plot, it’s a long-term plot. So if plots were set up in the nineties or so, they probably did a measurement in the mid 2000s, and they’ll probably do another measurement ten years subsequent.
Knowlton: And kind of on that note, we’re also interested in the idea that a lot of these studies started on the Beaver Creek Watershed and in that area so long ago. And so what’s the importance of having that kind of long-term range of study?
Gottfried: In general, long-term studies are actually vital for forestry, because we’re dealing usually with long periods of time. They always talked about a 120-year rotation, it would be nice to know what happens after five years of following your treatment. So forestry, by its nature, is a long-term effort, and will outlive most of the people who set up the study-the point being that they should be aware of these plots, and then if funding and interest are there, they should go into these plots and re-measure them and see what’s happening in them. Then they can adjust their plans for the future, based on the data that are being collected. So long-term study plots are actually very important. Same goes with efforts to maintain the experimental forest system, because of the same reason basically. I once heard a lecture by a scientist from the Northeast. He looked at a long-term watershed study. He said, "Well, if I had stopped the study in five years, these are my results. But now I’ve gone twenty years and these are my results," and they’re quite different, because they have hit a peak of heavy precipitation period and everything looked great, and then went into a drought. So we’ve got to, especially in the Southwest, deal with a whole range of climatic conditions which affect water yield and tree growth and vegetation health, understory vegetation health.
Knowlton: And the studies that you guys did on Beaver Creek, how long was the range?
Gottfried: Well, these plots were visited in the sixties, and we came back, I think, in the nineties. I can give you the exact.... Actually, I can.... Because I prepared a little list of things that I’ve been involved with-if I can find the right [solace?]. This was published in ’95, so it probably went to ’94. And so it was probably ’64, ’65, so about thirty years ago.
Knowlton: Speaking of the different things that you were involved in, in some of the research we did, we found some literature on snow management and snow levels that you were part of.
Gottfried: A lot of the snow papers, actually, Pete did the lower elevation, and I did the watersheds that were either in the Sierra Ancha Mountains-we have an experimental forest there-or in the White Mountains where we had a number of experimental watersheds, which were gauged watersheds where we measured snow and vegetation and wildlife.
Knowlton: So there was different-if I’m understanding correctly-different forests and different plots involved in those papers?
Gottfried: Some of the papers-we’d have to look at a specific paper, but some of them we would combine data. Some of the early papers, we looked at the NRCS snow courses, and looked at data from the different snow courses and how they compared with the watersheds where we had more intensive data. That’s one of the papers. I didn’t list it there, but actually we did have one in 1981 or ’2, Pete and I were involved with-Ffolliott. I’ve gotta be careful, because you have another Pete here.
Knowlton: Oh, that’s true. So the snow courses and measuring that, what’s kind of the significance of understanding that?
Gottfried: Well, the thing is that the NRCS, originally the SES, has these snow courses throughout the West, essentially, and they would use these data to try to forecast runoff for the spring. So most of these are in openings, they’re in like eight to ten stakes across an opening-in the old days. Now they use telemetry. So they would take measurements. And we were curious, said, "Well, we’ve got, in several cases, where we’ve got an NRCS or SES snow course in the middle of our area, how well do our snow courses match up with the NRCS? And so the NRCS gauges, the way they’re located, actually represent conditions above the elevation of our snow courses. So if we were working at 8,000 feet, a snow course might be more representative of 9,000 feet, just talking roughly. So that was interesting. We’ve actually used NRCS data. At Workman Creek we have a gauge and we’ve got to use that, because there was a period when we didn’t use snow courses there, but we used the NRCS to try to understand stream flow from the Workman Creek watersheds, which are in the mixed conifer type.
Knowlton: Understanding that stream flow, how does that kind of relate to something maybe more tangible for like the society or the community?
Gottfried: Well, the water on all these watersheds were part of the Salt-Verde River System, and the water flows into one of the reservoirs, either Roosevelt Lake or into the Verde System lakes. We were working very closely in the early days with the Salt River Project, and they were interested in trying to refine their measurements and predictions, especially in 1968 was a very wet year, so they were a little concerned because they had to manage the reservoirs. You know, the ideal is to end the snow melt season with a full reservoir, but you don’t want to endanger the reservoir, so you’ve got to release. So that’s when you see water running down the Salt River, is because they’re releasing either-usually in anticipation of more stream flow coming into the reservoir system from the higher elevation watersheds.
Knowlton: Great. So you were talking about the Salt River Project which was kind of essential in watershed management in Arizona. And it seems like there’s a lot of different organizations that were working with this Beaver Creek, so how did that kind of interplay happen? There’s like NAU, U. of A.....
Gottfried: Well, the task was really between the Coconino National Forest and the Rocky Mountain Station, which at that time was Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. So they decided to set up these watersheds and try to determine how different land management treatments affect runoff, which is actually what their initial goal was. The goal was not, as I understand it, not a multi-product goal, or a multi-resource goal, but a water goal, so to speak. And then they said, "This is an opportunity that we can study other aspects of the ecosystem," so then they branched out and began looking at the understory, and they had wildlife biologists, Game & Fish had a scientist working on Beaver Creek at one time. So then because forest [unclear] research was not a very big organization, and there’s expertise at NAU and at the U. of A., we brought in other people to help us fill in the gaps. Ffolliott, who you will speak with soon, was actually a Forest Service employee in the early days, and then he went down to the U. of A. for his Ph.D. and they thought so highly of him that they recruited him for the faculty, and he’s been there since.
Knowlton: And kind of establishing these partnerships with these people, it appears you guys have all continued kind of working together. So is that kind of a crucial thing? I mean, is that something positive that came out of the Beaver Creek experiments?
Gottfried: Well it’s good, I mean, in general, when you collaborate and everybody has something to contribute, everybody benefits. So I don’t know, Beaver Creek’s pretty much slowed down now, so I don’t know. Our guy technically was on the faculty at NAU, I think Kaylee [phonetic] has some work going on down there, but I’m not really aware of the fine points.
Knowlton: Okay. But since, even outside of Beaver Creek, like past that research and that experiment, have you continued working with people (Gottfried: Sure.) that you worked with on that project, that maybe you wouldn’t have made those connections?
Gottfried: Actually, I met Pete there. When I first came to Arizona, he was already well-established. And I always joke that I’ve known Pete longer than I’ve known my wife. (chuckles) But anyway, so that’s continued on. We maintained, we worked on projects over the years. And then when the Forest Service said I should go to school because I only had a master’s, U. of A. was my choice. I made arrangements and I ended up working as-Pete was my major professor.
Knowlton: Okay. And then you finished your master’s?
Gottfried: No, I had my master’s. That’s when I finished my Ph.D.
Knowlton: Oh, you finished your Ph.D., and then you came back to Rocky Mountain?
Gottfried: Yeah. Rocky Mountain Station actually paid for my.... I was on a half-time, so I worked half of the time, and then went to school half the time. They paid. So on the summers, during the summers and school breaks, I was up in Flagstaff. And then when I finished-not the dissertation, but most of the classwork-then I went back to the lab on campus.
Knowlton: Great. So in Beaver Creek, they set up kind of these control and different management treatments, and you were working downstream from those?
Gottfried: Who, me, or the research team?
Knowlton: Both.
Gottfried: Well, actually I came on after a lot of the watershed research had been terminated. In fact, one reason I got transferred to Flagstaff was that they had terminated most of the watershed studies in Arizona. So they had terminated not only Beaver Creek, but also studies in the Sierra Ancha Mountains and Three Bar, which is a chaparral watershed area on the west side of Roosevelt Lake. And there were watersheds in the Prescott area, they were terminated too. The only ones that remained were some of the watersheds in the White Mountains, and they were terminated in ’86 or ’89. So it was a whole redirection of research in the Southwest at that time. So the gauges were not being read, except as noted, and so since I had a degree in forestry at the time, they assigned me to Flagstaff.
Knowlton: So I guess overall-I know you talked about how it started out as just seeing how land management treatments affected the watersheds, and it kind of grew-if there was kind of a Big Picture idea that came out of these watershed experiments and Beaver Creek Watershed Experiment, is there one that you can kind of solidify?
Gottfried: Well, because of a variety of treatments, they gave managers an idea of what’s the possibility of a major resource, and how to manage, especially in the ponderosa pine type, how to manage ponderosa pine for the benefit of the ponderosa pine forest, and at the same time being able to augment the stream flow. And at the same time, they were looking at how these treatments affected wildlife and range, because there was a range scientist on board, Warren Clary, and he was interested in the understory. I think there were a few cattle experiments in the mix too.
Knowlton: Have you seen any of the research and kind of the findings of Beaver Creek implemented, or did it kind of shape how the land was managed?
Gottfried: I don’t think the managers would go and say, "Okay, this is what they did on Watershed 17, let’s say, just for argument’s sake. I think what it does is allow the managers to see what the potentials are, and they say, "If we look at the resources that may benefit, or not benefit from a particular prescription-you know, the work at Beaver Creek and other places-we’ll say this should benefit it, or this will not benefit, or it’ll be neutral." So in this day and age we have to look at the whole package, and it helps them give them some idea of what may be the consequences of their actions. But the final decision on managing the land belongs to the land manager, whether it’s the Forest Service, like the Coconino, or the Apache Sitgreaves, or the BLM district if they’re involved-what have you.
Knowlton: Right. It seems like there’s a few groups, like the Arizona Watershed Project, and kind of the more groups associated with getting the water and having the water to use downstream, and increasing the water yield. Were you involved in any of that, or do you know kind of how that interplayed with the project?
Gottfried: Well, that was the goal at Beaver Creek, and it was the goal of the mixed conifer work. The thing is that we knew if we cut all the trees off, and there were experiments at both Workman Creek and at Beaver Creek, Washoe 12, where they cut all the trees off, so that was drastic treatment. We explained that this is an experiment, we’re not recommending this kind of a treatment, because you don’t do that. But it did give us an idea what the potential was. And then if we say, "Okay, now we go backwards," and if we leave a certain density of trees, or cut strips, or what have you, then we’re getting ‘X’ percent of what the full potential is." So the project was initially started during the drought of the fifties-I mean the discussions between the various water managers, land managers, and the Forest Service, and I guess to some extent the university people. And so during drought everybody is thirsty, and so this was an issue. And then as we see today in some of the discussions, people worried that young trees were taking over the world. And you see that argument today, interestingly enough-and we’re in a drought. (chuckles) So this is what actually brought the people together initially, was a drought, and the concern about the land management.
Knowlton: Do you have anything else, Tyler? Do you have any other aspects of the project that we might not have covered? I mean, I know there’s a lot, it’s a huge project.
Gottfried: Yeah, I think if you have the resources, both in money and people, that there is really a distinct value of maintaining historical sites, research sites. And being able to maintain the record-maybe not as intensely as it was done in the early days, but I think because we’re in a fluid situation always, because we’re dealing with climate and issues of land management philosophy, that it’s worthwhile to have these reference sites throughout the area-the Western United States, let’s say--[unclear] the country, where you can actually use to find out what the trajectory is of different land management, or of the land itself without management, which is, in fact, a kind of management too. Doing nothing is a management decision.
Knowlton: So potentially revisiting the sites at Beaver Creek and seeing what changes have occurred since the kind of treatments the study was terminated.
Gottfried: Right. The only thing at Beaver Creek, the Forest came in there and cut some of the plots, so we really may have to-it’s not really a long-term continuation, though. I don’t know if the data collections were as intense as they were originally, so it may be that they may have to start.... It may not have a continuous record, and we have to reboot, so to speak. But there are areas-I mean these points actually have value otherwise, because like at Workman Creek in the Sierra Anchas, we had the Coon Creek Fire which devastated the area. I mean, it was a wildfire. We went back and re-established our points, and used those points to determine changes in vegetation. And overstory, understory, related to the fire. Some people may have used those for soil sampling points, too. Our effort was mainly looking at vegetation.
Knowlton: And there was prescribed burning that took place at Beaver Creek, correct?
Gottfried: Yeah.
Knowlton: In some of the literature that we’ve read, it seemed like the idea of prescribed burning was kind of relatively new at the time, as a management.
Gottfried: Yeah, kind of emerged from the fuel clean-up, post logging, and progressed to a point now where it could be a treatment, depending on standing conditions of trying to improve the stand. As long as you could keep the intensity of fire so we don’t damage the stands with understory burning, is viable. And there are some research studies surrounding Flagstaff, and throughout the country, where they’re looking at the effects of logging, logging and fire, and fire alone-firefighter surrogate study. And there is a plot at Fort Valley, just outside of Flagstaff. I don’t think there are any at Beaver Creek. They’re all scattered throughout the United States, from Washington State on down California and then over.
Knowlton: Right. And I think if I remember, you also have worked on sedimentation, in-stream fill, in the piñon juniper?
Gottfried: Yeah, we did. We worked with Lopes and Ffolliott, now because Baker and I worked on a study. And then Lopes and Ffolliott and Baker did a subsequent study on sedimentation on some of these areas.
Knowlton: And was that effects from fire?
Gottfried: It was mostly, I think, more of mechanical treatments.
Knowlton: And what kind of mechanical treatments?
Gottfried: They were in P.J. science primarily.
Knowlton: So you guys came in and did thinning, or what kind of treatments did you do?
Gottfried: No, we just looked at the soil movement, because we had records to match up, if I’m.... You know, it’s been a while.
Knowlton: Yeah. I’m trying to understand-the soil movement would be from logging, from traffic, from what kind of...?
Gottfried: Soil movement in P.J. was because of the mechanical-you know, the sites were treated with heavy equipment. And so initially the soil was fluffed up, the crust was broken, and they were prone to-you know, if you had a runoff event, surface runoff, it would move the soil. In the study they did where they sprayed P.J., they had less erosion because they left the trees alone for about five years after the treatment. They had a water yield increase. I don’t think the soil erosion was as high as on some of the mechanically treated plots. That was Malkinson’s study, not mine.
Knowlton: I’m trying to think of anything else about kind of this big overarching project that incorporated a lot of stuff.
Gottfried: I think Beaver Creek produced good information. A good part of it, but probably not all of it, was published and is available. Because sometimes it’s hard to go from the field stage to the writing stage. I think there’s a fairly good record of the literature on Beaver Creek. And I think-well actually, didn’t Malkinson put a bibliography together?
Knowlton: Yeah, they did, and it’s quite hefty-a hefty sum of publications.
Gottfried: There were results of coming out of, quite a bit of information coming out of Beaver Creek.
Knowlton: And I guess do you think in that sense that people are referring to that study and using that study?
Gottfried: Well, we hope so!
Knowlton: Right.
Gottfried: You know, sometimes things become standard, appear in manuals and things like that, so they may not know that the results came from Beaver Creek. They just say, "When you’re in this situation, do ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘C,’" or, "Do ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and not ‘C,’ and then do ‘D.’" So the information’s out there, but it may not be referenced as Beaver Creek information.
Knowlton: As coming from Beaver Creek, right. That’s very cool. (to Starbard) Do you have anything else? No. (to Gottfried) Do you have anything else?
Gottfried: I don’t know-you ask?
Knowlton: I feel like we covered quite a bit of stuff.
Gottfried: I assume you talked to Dan Neary. Oh yeah, you told me that you’re trying to set up an....
Knowlton: Yeah, we’re still trying to get in touch with him.
Gottfried: Because he would be the-Beaver Creek would fall into his venue, though right now he’s very busy with the Schultz Fire.
Knowlton: Oh, I actually didn’t even think about his connection with the Schultz Fire.
Gottfried: Yeah, his crew’s been there since the fire, taking measurements. We worked together on the border. Do you know Karen Koestner? She’s a technician, fire [unclear] for Neary. I try to schedule her to go down and check our gauges down there, and she has to work around the Schultz Fire.
Knowlton: Yeah that makes sense. It’s kind of a big area of new research to look into.
Gottfried: And fortunately or unfortunately, it was right outside of town, so they could jump right on it, as soon as they were allowed in, which is actually a good thing, and you don’t have to travel for four hours to get there.
Knowlton: Right. Yeah, and there’s a lot of resources going into that because it was really scary for the Flagstaff community, so everyone’s kind of-it hit home, everyone’s jumpin’ on it.
Gottfried: One of my friends is still digging part of his property out.
Knowlton: Oh, from the flooding and stuff?
Gottfried: Yeah, the mud. I think the house was okay, but the outbuildings and corrals are having problems.
Knowlton: Yeah, it was a pretty intense summer after that fire happened.
Gottfried: Yeah. Scary.